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Our Latest Newsletter: 2008 - Volume 2, Issue 2

• Letter from the President
• New FusionWare Partnerships
• STORServer White Paper: Data Center Virtualization
• Employee Focus: Dennis Guilfoyle
• New Team Members
• The Rise of Linux and Open Source Software

Download/Print Volume 2, Issue 2 of FusionWare Newsletter (PDF).

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Letter from the President

If you’re like FusionWare and the majority of successful companies, you’re continually looking to make processes, procedures and equipment more efficient and effective; however, most importantly, you’re aiming to accomplish it all within a budget. After all, the bottom line is critical.

In our last newsletter, we talked about virtualization, a route many of you are considering to create greater efficiencies for your own company. If you’re an avid racing sailor as I am, you know that your boat and team need to be well-equipped or you’ll never win a race. You’re aware that it takes preparation and planning to come out on top. Virtualization is the same. Thorough planning and preparation are crucial to ensure the investment you make in your infrastructure ends up saving money, not costing more.

Server and storage consolidation are key components to your virtualization strategy. While many organizations have highly talented IT team members, not everyone has the knowledge base to create the complex foundation necessary for a virtualization plan. With our team of certified virtualization experts, we can supplement your team to help analyze your needs, create a virtualization plan, and assist with the implementation of that plan. We are part of your team, and with that kind of teamwork, it’s nothing but smooth sailing.

Wishing you a great summer!

Warmest regards,
Alan Davis
CEO
FusionWare Corporation
Pacific Software Associates

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New FusionWare Partnerships

ARX: develops solutions that enable electronic payment processing for Web, call center and POS.

Barracuda: provides firewall products to block e-mail spam, viruses, spyware, load balancing and instant messaging.

LeftHand Networks: provides highly available and scalable iSCSI SANs.

LifeBoat Distribution: a software distributor that specializes in emerging software lines including database management, security, virtualization, productivity, development and other segments.

Sendio: provides enterprise email integrity spam blocking appliances using sender address verification.

StrongMail: provides high-volume email delivery, personalization and management.

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STORServer White Paper: Data Center Virtualization

Executive Summary

Many enterprise IT departments have attempted to respond to growth by adding servers and storage systems dedicated to specific applications, business functions, customers, and geographic locations. In many cases, the result has been a complex, inflexible infrastructure that is difficult and costly to manage. Today, virtualization technologies are the generally accepted way to solve these issues.

Server virtualization, which enables several applications to run independently on a single physical server, is an important first step toward achieving a virtualized environment. But it is only by combining server virtualization with storage virtualization that enterprises can realize the full benefits of virtualization. Consolidating resources through data center virtualization techniques can improve the return on IT investments, boost IT productivity, increase system reliability and availability, and ultimately enhance the ability of IT to meet the needs of the business.

Today there are several field-proven virtualization software and hardware products available, including Compellent Storage CenterTM virtualized storage products and VMware® server virtualization software. This white paper will discuss how using Storage Center and VMware together allows both large and small enterprises to realize immediate benefits from data center virtualization.

To download the complete white paper from STORServer, click here.

Thanks to STORServer for their kind permission to run an executive summary of its data center virtualization white paper. STORServer provides a pre-integrated solution for comprehensive data protection which automates sophisticated, policy-based backup, disaster recovery and archiving. Built on IBM’s Tivoli Storage Manager, a STORServer offers the flexibility to adapt to changing business and technology requirements, together, with the value-added simplicity of STORServer’s unique implementation, administration and support approaches.

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Employee Focus: Dennis Guilfoyle

With virtualization opportunities growing at an escalating rate, FusionWare needed to bring additional talent into its professional services team. Dennis Guilfoyle not only offered expertise in virtualization, but also a wealth of knowledge in storage and AIX (IBM’s Advanced Interactive eXecutive operating system).

As a Senior Solutions Engineer at FusionWare, Dennis brings more than 40 years of experience to the table, encompassing a unique breadth of leadership and deep hands-on technical skills across a wide array of data center level infrastructure technologies. Prior to joining FusionWare, Dennis held the lead technical responsibility in building highly available and functional data centers, which included in-depth experience with both SAN and NAS storage, disaster recovery implementations, virtualization at both the storage and server level, and VoIP.

Dennis holds a variety of certifications including: IBM Tivoli Storage Manager, IBM SAN Storage, IBM AIX operating system, IBMxSeries Hardware, NetApp Storage, and a VMware Certification Professional.

To inquire about FusionWare’s virtualization expertise and how we can begin working together, please contact Ed Cox, VP of Professional Services. (800) 764-8326 or ecox@psateam.com.

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New Team Members

Pacific Software Associates and FusionWare would like to introduce you to our newest team members.

Larry Pope, Practice Director

Mike McCarthy, Practice Director

Ben Barshaw, Solutions Engineer

Christy Leung, Marketing Communications Specialist

Tom McClure, Inside Sales Representative

Steve Scherer, Senior Account Executive

Peggy Kresich, Senior Account Executive

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The Rise of Linux and Open Source Software

By Chad Prucha, Senior Solutions Architect at FusionWare

Open source software (OSS), specifically Linux, will become a more noticeable presence in offices and data centers. You might spot a few Linux or open source-only shops (especially around Linus Torvalds’ hometown of Portland); but you'll more frequently encounter heterogeneous environments mixing Linux, IBM/HP/Sun UNICES and Windows.

For Linux and open source to win, the other proprietary vendors don't necessarily need to lose. This is how Linux gains a toehold at the fringes and creeps ever inward as it proves itself capable, adaptable and user-friendly.

A few market factors pushing Linux and open source into the server room include:

• Initial cost: OSS bundled or added to Linux operating systems is initially cheaper than a Windows equivalent. An example is MS SQL Server on Windows 2K3 versus MySQL or PGSQL on Linux.
• Total Cost of Operation (TCO): Open source's model is really based on selling support and convenience rather than the software. If you have a proficient OSS/Linux expert on staff, and are willing to dedicate a small budget for support, you'll likely reap the reward of lower TCO.
• Security: Although Linux is not perfectly secure, it is built around the proven UNIX security frameworks, which are a lot more aggravating to malicious coders than a Windows' security architecture. When you consider that security software licenses for Linux servers are unnecessary and there are several reputable free security packages for Linux, you have less to buy and manage.
• Flexibility: Linux is flexible and interoperable with Windows. Linux is so flexible it runs on just about every platform. It is the preferred supercomputing OS of choice. Academic and government institutions love to cluster Sony Playstation 3 boxes running Linux. It's useful for those little tasks like code-breaking and genome analysis.
• Commerical backing: The majority of network appliances (like Barracuda) currently available are probably running Linux and OSS. Log into a VMware console; it's Linux. Xen's console? Linux. Use Google? Rows and rows and rows of Linux servers. Companies don't just base their products/services on Linux, though. Reputable companies like IBM, HP, Novell and Sun build entire business strategies around it. It's functionally and commercially viable.
• Virtualization is allowing a number of prospects to experiment with Linux. All they have to do is download the ISO file, dump it into a directory, and install a virtual server. Also, when clients consolidate, it frees up older hardware for experimentation. With the crazy popularity of Ubuntu, a very friendly, very well-engineered Linux, I expect experimenters will like what they see.




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